Skuld's Dilemma
by Paul Corrigan
Summary: Skuld must choose. Her manga love, or her fanfic love?


SKULD'S DILEMMA  
A _Oh My Goddess!_ metafanfiction  
  
_Oh My Goddess!_ characters and situations created by Kosuke Fujishima  
Character of Kenji Morisato created by Ed Sharpe  
  
Dedicated to Mr. Sharpe  
With apologies to Mr. Fujishima (and, while I'm at it, to Mr. Sharpe)  
  
Comments welcome, of course.  
  
Anyone who had looked into Skuld's room that night would have seen a  
very unusual sight.  
  
The young goddess knelt on the floor, deep in concentration. This was  
not so unusual in itself; often she could be seen knelt over a blueprint  
for her latest mecha, musing over the absolute best way to increase its  
efficiency.  
  
Tonight, however, was not for mechs. There was, instead of a blueprint,  
two ordinary Polaroid photographs, one on her right, one on her left.  
  
The righthand Polaroid was a picture of two young men, taken inside  
the temple. One was the mortal Keiichi Morisato. Keiichi was looking up  
proudly at the real focus of the picture, the younger (though much, much  
taller) young man beside him. The young man--the boy really, though a bit  
older than Skuld--looked something like Keiichi, except for hair   
unusually light for a Japanese; he wore a shirt reading in English   
"Princeton Naked Rugby." He for his part was looking straight at the camera   
(at the photographer, actually, or so Skuld suspected, judging from what she   
knew about the boy's heart, for she'd taken the photo herself) and   
smiling broadly. His left hand was resting on a mecha; it looked   
something like one of Skuld's mechas, but had flourishes that had clearly   
come from another hand. The young man appeared quite proud of his   
variation on Skuld's design.  
  
On this photo was written, in the script of the gods, the letters QNZ.   
In the heavenly script, there are only letters for consonants, it only   
being possible to distinguish words with the same consonants but   
sdifferent vowels in context. The heavenly host are use to this,   
though, and anyway Skuld certainly didn't need to be reminded of the   
vowels in the word, for she'd have recognized the combination anywhere as   
the boy's name.   
  
The lefthand photo was of another boy, of medium height this time, about  
Skuld's age, with messy hair and wearing a Batman t-shirt. He was on a  
bicycle, doing a particularly elaborate trick jump. All the boy's  
attention should have been on the bike; but he could not help but look  
towards the camera for the moment the picture was taken as he rode  
through the air.  
  
Skuld thought she might know why. Again she'd been the one behind the   
camera. It was lucky he hadn't hurt himself.  
  
On this photo were written this one's name as wrtten in the divine   
script, with the consonants SNTRW.  
  
For a long while Skuld inspected each picture in turn, looking at one   
for a few moments, then the other, than back to the first, looking for   
all the world like she was trying to decide between the two.  
Back, forth. Back, forth. Left, right. Left, right.  
  
Time passed. The time at each photo steadily decreased, and Skuld  
became increasingly agitated, as if by an itch she could not scratch, or,  
perhaps, by a problem to which her literally superhuman intelligence   
simply could not obtain a solution.  
  
As time passed, she first muttered, then spoke, then nearly yelled the  
names of the people in the pictures.  
  
Right. "Kenji."  
  
Left. "Sentaro."  
  
Right. "Kenji."  
  
Left. "Sentaro."  
  
Right. "Kenji."  
  
Left. "Sentaro."  
  
Right, left, right, left, right left right left...  
  
"Kenji. Sentaro. Kenji, Sentaro. Kenji, Sentaro, Kenji Sentaro..."  
  
Tick tock tick tock tick--  
  
The bomb exploded.  
  
"WAAAAH! I CANNOT BEAR TO PART WITH EITHER! WHICHEVER SHALL I CHOOSE?"  
  
Followed by general weeping and gnashing of teeth, interrupted at last  
by the opening of Skuld's door by a clearly unhappy (though as always   
sympathetic) Belldandy, an extremely unhappy (and belligerent, not to   
mention half-drunk) Urd, and an unhappy (but thankfully sober, and too tired   
to be belligerent) Keiichi.  
  
"Oh dear! I knew it! Oh, must I do this again?...Skuld, I know you like   
both your friends very much, and I know you don't want to hurt either of   
them, and God knows having to choose between friends is hard, but you know   
very well you can't have two boyfriends even in heaven, and certainly   
you can't down here, and sitting up all night and crying about it so   
loudly you wake up the rest of the house for three nights in a row isn't   
going to change that, not to mention it's not very considerate of the   
rest of us..."  
  
"Dammit Bell, do you _have_ to treat the little brat with kid gloves   
_all_ the time? Look, kid, what the _heck_ is your goddamn problem,   
yelling like that at this time o' night when _some_ of us are tryinna   
freaking _sleep_? You listen and you listen good, Skuld, if you wake me   
up with your damn tantrums one more time, I'll--"  
"Urd, shut up. Yo, Skuld, you been watching too much _Ranma 1/2_ again?"  
  
End  



End file.
